Her Baby Died After Birth 69 Years Ago—or So She Was Told

Newser — Jenn Gidman

For nearly 70 years, Genevieve Purinton believed the baby girl she delivered in an Indiana hospital died soon after birth. This week in Florida, however, she met that baby girl, now a 69-year-old mother and grandmother, very much alive and working as a massage therapist in Vermont.

"I'm not dead," Connie Moultroup laughed as she hugged her mother Monday for the first time ever in a Tampa assisted-living center; FOX 13 has video of their emotional reunion.

When an 18-year-old Purinton gave birth to Moultroup in 1949, "I asked to see the baby and they said she died, that's all I remember," the 88-year-old tells NBC News.

Yahoo Lifestyle notes she was never given a death certificate, and she never had any other children.

But Moultroup hadn't died: She'd actually been adopted, and her adoptive mother died when she was 5, Moultroup's daughter, Bonnie Chase, tells NBC, adding that a stepmom who eventually entered the picture was abusive.

"She would fantasize about her [biological] mother rescuing her," Chase says. What finally brought Purinton and Moultroup together: Ancestry.com DNA-testing kits that Chase bought for her mom and herself last Christmas.

Chase's results led her to a bunch of cousins, who noted their relation to Purinton. Then the phone call came. "I think I'm your mother," Moultroup recalls Purinton saying.

Purinton is now thrilled to discover she not only has a daughter, but that she's a grandmother and great-grandmother, too. "I don't think Santa can outdo this one," Moultroup tells Yahoo.